“I guess I could say I learned that Ed—Ed was the one I was talking to? Thin, with the boots?—I guess I could say I learned that Ed needs the Duchess of Windsor. Ed was overready, Robert. Ed was a premie. One thing, Ed introduced me to a term I’ve never heard before—‘window treatment.’ Otherwise … back to the drawing board.” I felt such a failure.

“Back to the ‘Bored of Ed,’ hunh? Hartley, be tolerant of poor Ed. He only came fast because you’re so exciting,” Robert rattled forward, saving me. He did that from the start. “There’s a coffee shop at the end of your block, which is the beginning of my block. Ossorio’s ‘physical plant’ is for shit, but his coffee is the tincture of ambrosia. He believes it’s very good for you and that makes it so. Trust me. The place is all tiled like a mouthful of broken teeth? You’ve seen it. Go back to your writing, sorry for interrupting, but I’ll be having caffeine with the silver older guy from last night around, say, six? (He was Carole Lombard’s confidant and favorite fellow shopper.) He’ll like you, guy’s got amazing stories. Cary Grant-Randolph Scott sex in the pool stories. Then we three, from there, we’ll just invent the rest of the evening. What you and I don’t know, for now we’ll fake. So, bye. Scribble, scribble, Mr. Fitzgerald. Oh, and don’t forget the Nobel delivery, your stoop, by ten. Ciao, Airedale duck …”

1980: It was always a new guy, it was usually the first night. I was so new to Old New York, I kept getting lost: the avenues had names, the cross streets numbers, and Romance wore size fourteen boots.

I could now claim a friend one block away, a closet-sized apartment, some few clothes in it, a Hermes portable typewriter Swiss-made, of stainless steel baked a detached and promising pistachio green. I also had a part-time job and certain short stories I continually worked on. And I had limited bar-admission mad money for weekends spent prowling, picking, preferring, perfecting. Erotically speaking, with Maestro Gustafson’s encouragement, I was already making book.

I felt as shy as I acted bold. Before entering certain doors, I literally shook. I crossed arms to disguise St. Vitus spasms. Fear, governed, made me look pugnacious, or so your Hartley hoped. I grew wilder in search of quips and news and good details for him.

Robert went so often to the St. Mark’s Baths he called himself “amphibious.” He assumed I knew the place. I stayed away, scared. But I was haunted, goaded, stoked, by Robert’s query, “What’d you learn?”